


Shelf Life

by RazzleDazzle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 3a Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:05:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RazzleDazzle/pseuds/RazzleDazzle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong><a href="http://stilesian.tumblr.com/post/68270124927/televisionsbitch-replied-to-your-post-okay-um">prompted from tumblr</a>: sterek during derek's return to town.</strong>
</p>
<p>    The industrial feel of the loft fits him, Cora had said when they talked about returning to Beacon Hills. “But Derek, it’s got to be <em>functional</em>. What kind of self-respecting twenty-something doesn’t have shelves?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelf Life

In the end, he still has a few months left on the lease, so he decides to stay at the loft. After all, what’s trading one graveyard for another? The burnt shell of his old house feels much more macabre than the apartment where he forcibly murdered one of his only friends, anyway. It has working electricity at least.

The industrial feel of the loft fits him, Cora had said when they talked about returning to Beacon Hills. “But Derek, it’s got to be _functional_. What kind of self-respecting twenty-something doesn’t have shelves?”

He’d briefly considered paying off Scott to make sure she never finds out about the short period of time that he’d taken up residence in the abandoned rail yard. 

”I have a bed frame,” he pointed out.

Cora had rolled her eyes in a way that made her look like Laura. “Congratulations, remind me to pick up some confetti and an ice cream cake at the next rest stop. But I’m serious. You need more than a place to sleep. You need a home.” 

He didn’t tell her that he wasn’t sure anything could feel like home anymore— especially in Beacon Hills. Without a pack, without  _her_ , how could it?

Instead, he’d raised an eyebrow.

Mirroring him, she sat in silence— not backing down until he had to look away, back to the road.

She’d taken that as victory. “There’s an Ikea twenty minutes outside of Beacon Hills. If you don’t go, Lydia will, and if she comes back with a dozen tasteful, pink throw pillows for the come stain you call a couch, it’ll be your own fault.” 

He’d elbowed her for foul language. Other than that, he wasn’t intimidated. Mostly because she was right.

He hadn’t bought a new living room set, but he  _had_  gotten the shelves. Cora should consider it the progress she’d been so adamant about. He’d even texted her pictures of them as he put them up; he still has two left before the far wall is complete, and she can see the finished product. 

But Stiles breezes into the loft like his name’s on the lease, and Derek would be annoyed if he weren’t so confused.

 ”Stiles?” he says, hand pausing where he’d been reaching for a hammer.

Stiles is equally surprised to see him, if the way he freezes mid-stride and his heart rate skyrockets are any indication. “Oh. Uh. Derek.” He swallows, face contorting like someone just asked him to eat a live cockroach. “Yo.”

They both stay like that in silence, until Derek raises his eyebrows in the way that Stiles knows says, ‘well, get on with it.’

**(**  The kid has proclaimed often and loudly that he’s fluent in the language of Derek’s eyebrows. Whatever that means. **)**

Stiles' right arm lifts, finger pointing at the spiral staircase. The other comes up behind his neck to tug nervously at the tufts of dark brown hair there. “Er, uh. Cora?” he says by way of explanation.

”Isn’t here,” Derek answers slowly.

Stiles blinks once, twice, then he nods enthusiastically, even though there’s nothing to agree with. “Right, gotcha.” His arms drop, cross over his chest instead. “D’you know when she’s gonna be back? Should I come back later…?”

If Derek didn’t know his sister—and he  _does_  know her now, he’s proud to say—he would be surprised. He heaves himself to his feet. As it is, he’s just frustrated.

”Stiles, she’s  _not here_.”

That triggers a sharp crack of the neck as Stiles pulls an angry look of disbelief at the ceiling before shifting to glare at him. ”Yeah, got that the first time,” Stiles snaps. “If you don’t want me here, that’s fine, but eventually you’re going to have to accept that your sister and I are friends. Pretty good friends, actually. So— whatever. Just tell her I stopped by, alright?”

Narrowed eyes smolder with a harsh edge to his typical take-no-shit attitude. There’s nothing friendly or playful or joking about it, leaving Derek to feel like he’s missed something.

”I could, but it wouldn’t make a difference.”

”Jesus  _Christ_ , Derek. You made your point. There’s no need to be a giant dick about it.”

Derek barely contains a frustrated huff. Conversations like this might be why Cora and Peter insist that he talk more, like he used to. “Cora didn’t come back, Stiles,” he manages to grit out, clenched jaw muffling the words but not the difficulty with which he struggles to say them. “And she’s not coming back. Not anytime soon.”

”You’re kidding me. You’re— For  _real_?”

**(**  For his part, Stiles is two seconds from whipping his phone out and demanding explanations from Cora herself, but as his hand digs into the denim pockets of his jeans for his phone, he changes his mind. Not fast enough. Not effective enough. And Derek? Well, unlucky for Derek, he’s on hand and available.  **)**

A laugh spills forth, almost manic in its pitch. Derek stares at him, not a little alarmed. But he doesn’t step forward, or move at all, really, while Stiles’ hands release from his pockets to thread through his hair, then flatten palm to palm as he touches them to his mouth, closes his eyes, and carefully chooses his words: like weapons from an armory. They’re all pointed, well-crafted, but his execution is shoddy; he’s swinging without technique, his only focus being how much everything sucks. Derek knows. He's been there.

“So, let me get this straight,” he begins, and Derek thinks he would have preferred if Stiles had stormed off. “First, you don’t even give me a heads up that you’re getting the hell out of town. I have to find out from  _Cora_  right before you guys make your grand getaway. Now, despite letting me think all this time that when you come back, she’ll be with you, I’m standing here listening to you offer up her excuses as if they’re throw-away lines I’m supposed to just accept and forget?”

Another laugh, this time one of those ‘I should have known better’ ones. Very Taylor Swiftian—if she channeled her woes into sarcasm and not song. 

**(**  Derek can tell because he had the misfortune to become almost as familiar with her music as he did with his own sister on their road trip. An indignity foisted upon him, most likely out of spite. **)**

”God, you two are so related. I can’t believe it slips my mind sometimes, considering how disgustingly obvious it is to anyone with eyes and a functioning brain. My mistake.”

—Let’s not tally those up anytime soon, he wants to say. But with the crazed thump-thump-thump of his heart and the fevered pacing of his feet, Derek knows that in this state, it wouldn’t be received well. They have a system now, and deviations require an answering reaction to balance them out.

”Stiles.”

” _What_?” But his gaze avoids him, seeking out instead the sparse furnishings, the tall windows, the barren walls. It’s annoying, but when isn’t Stiles annoying.

”I’m sorry,” Derek says. He means it, too.

”Yeah, not good enough. Seriously, I— ugh. No. Nope! I’m leaving. I’m out.”

’You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. “ _Stiles_!”

”Stop with the freaking apology, Derek! You don’t mean it, and even if you did, you certainly can’t apologize for your sister. That’s not how it  _works_. God, like. I just, I can’t even believe I fooled myself for a second into thinking that my feelings might actually matter to you guys. It’s kind of disgusting that out of the three of you, Peter’s the one who’s been the most courteous of what I want, and he’s a  _mass-murdering sociopath_  who assaulted me, ruined my best friend’s life, and nearly killed my crush of eight years. Literally.”

Stiles’ eyes are over-bright and Derek’s fists clench. How this, how  _everything_  always gets turned around on him, becomes his fault, will never cease to amaze him. Fucking Stiles. Fucking Cora. Fucking Peter. Fuck all of them.

And fuck that Derek now has something else to feel guilty for. One step forward, six steps back: the life and times of Derek Hale. It’s not fair. Or it wouldn’t be, if he weren’t convinced somewhere deep down that he deserves it.

But that’s deep down, and he’s not eager for it to rise up again, like bile in the back of his throat. 

_Fucking_ Stiles.

”Do you ever stop and consider how it feels like for us? We don’t— we don’t  _have_  anyone to leave behind anymore. We don’t have a dad who calls our cell phones when we stay out too late, we don’t have a mom to bring home dinner. We haven’t had anything like that in  _years_. Don’t you get that? Does it conveniently slip your mind while you’re too busy studying for your tests and mooning over Lydia and sticking your nose where it doesn’t fucking belong? Because let me tell you, Stiles. Even with a pack of alphas breathing down my neck, or yet another person I’ve made the mistake of trusting screwing me face-first into the ground, I. Never. Forget.

”And God forbid we try and get something like that back. Anytime we try, Cora and I? It gets ripped away. The closest thing we have to family anymore is pack. Cora’s my pack. Peter, for all his many,  _many_ faults, of which I’m far more aware than you, is my pack. You know where the rest of our pack is, Stiles? They’re dead. My mother, my sister, Boyd, Erica— every last one of them. And whether you like it or not, me and you? We’re not pack. We never were.”

The silence that follows is tense. For the first time since they’ve met, Stiles has willfully gone completely still. Not for the first time, Derek wonders if he's ruined any chance at friendship with someone that he cares about despite himself. Then:

”I’m Scott’s pack.”

Derek snorts.

”And you could be, too, if you wanted. Scott trusts you, you know, like I have for a long-ass time. And he— he cares about you. All you have to do is stop being a hermitic douchebag for five frickin’ seconds and acknowledge it.”

The anger radiating from him has faded to determination; Derek doesn't know what to do with it. Staring blankly seems like the best course of action.

At the lack of response, Stiles turns his attention to his own hands and does something with his phone.

”…Did you just text Cora?” he can’t help but ask. If there’s going to be a round two later, this time with his sister, he needs to mentally prepare.

”No. Scott.” Stiles looks up. “He’s gonna be over in twenty with a couple of pizzas. So, if I were you, I’d get crackin’ on all of that—” he gestures vaguely at the remaining shelves, nails, and hammer “—because I won’t be helping.”

Derek blinks. The silence stretches between them like an abyss, and for a second, it seems pretty much uncrossable. Then Stiles strides forward, and drops his keys on the table like it’s the easiest thing in the world. The next thing Derek knows, the kid’s pushing himself up to sit on the place where he  _eats his food_ and starts playing with one of the nails.

Snatching it out of his hand—partly so he doesn’t hurt himself and partly because he needs it—Derek heaves a long-suffering sigh and turns back to the wall, hammer poised. “You’d just get in the way, anyway.” 

”Hey!”

Derek looks at him out of the corner of his eye and catches his dopey, half-hearted expression of affront twisting into a smile. He pretends he didn’t notice, and continues forth with his home improvement.

When Stiles hands him the final shelf, holding it level so Derek can fit into place, he doesn’t even think to question it.

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not include this in the monster fic that I'm writing as my own version of 3B. If I do, it'll become a part of a series. But yeah, thanks for reading! This was super fun to write, so megalove to televisionsbitch for the prompt <3


End file.
